Boko Haram must be fought, says Soyinka

Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka is against dialogue between the Federal Government and the fundamentalist sect Boko Haram.

“This is a violent organization. What do you do with them? I’m sorry but you must fight them,” Soyinka said.

The 1986 Nobel Prize winner in Literature spoke to IPS during a visit to the United Nations on the International Day of Peace.

The International Day of Peace was celebrated on September 21with a debate about how to build a global culture of tolerance. Among the participants were superstar actor Forest Whitaker, economist Jeffrey Sachs and Soyinka.

After his speech, Soyinka spoke to IPS about the situation Nigeria, where Boko Haram has been responsible for thousands of deaths and the bombings of many churches, the Police Headquarters and the UN office in Abuja.

Boko Haram (western education is a sin) is seeking to establish sharia law in the country.

“We have an organisation which closes down schools, shoots faculty teachers, knocks out children and turns most of the north into an educational wasteland. How can we reach the children there? We must first get rid of Boko Haram,” Soyinka said.

“We have a contradiction,” he acknowledged. “How do we get rid of Boko Haram? Violence must become involved. That is a dilemma.”

Calling for armed intervention on Peace Day may certainly seem like a paradox. But Soyinka’s call for attacking Boko Haram to stop the group’s attacks on schools made more sense after the debate, where speaker after speaker highlighted the importance of education to enable a global culture of peace to grow.

As stipulated in the 1999 Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, the United Nations’ primary goal is to “create and maintain world peace” through economic, social and political agreements, and in the worst cases through military intervention.

For such a framework to succeed, a foundation of peace and a culture of tolerance must to be built. A cornerstone in building this culture is inculcating respect for others in children.

“The real weapon of mass destruction is ignorance,” said British-Iranian philanthropist Nasser David Khalili, one of the speakers during the event to emphasise the importance of schooling, building a culture of peace. “The solution must be education.”

Sachs, a professor of sustainable development at Columbia University, said: “As an economist it strikes me… how hunger and poverty are incendiary parts of war.”

He added: In the Sahel region of Mali this summer, for example, a famine sparked conflict between nomads and farmers over access to water.”

Sachs drew attention to the fact that critical issues, such as these, receive too little attention, describing the great frustration he felt as he failed to raise money from the World Bank on behalf of Mali. “Shout Al-Qaeda, and you get millions for missiles. But try to do something preventive, and you do not get anything.”

He urged global leaders to invest in “development rather than military”. Globally, “we are spending more than 10 times more on the military than we do on development,” Sachs said. “In the U.S., the rate is 30 to one.”